star trek

The original Star Trek series was one of my very first introductions to science fiction–and to science fiction fandom. When I started going to conventions in the late eighties, I was delighted to discover that a group of fan performers, headed up by the redoutable Julia Ecklar as Captain Kirk, had done a couple of live musical parodies of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. They used, respectively, West Side Story and South Pacific–giving us Wrath Side Story and Spock Pacific.

Dara digitized our old copies of these, and you can find them on her YouTube channel here.

I mention this because to this day, Dara and I still periodically break into song snippets from these performances, and I always DID love the opening number in particular: “WHAT AIN’T WE GOT? WE AIN’T GOT SPOCK!”

Now that line’s got a brand new poignance, since I am seeing the Internet explode with the news of the passing of Leonard Nimoy. The New York Times has an article here. Tor.com covers the story here. John Scalzi has a post up here.

I started watching Trek in my mid-teens, and at that age, I was totally bowled over by Captain Kirk. But as I grew older I developed much more of an appreciation for Spock, and a couple of my very favorite episodes of the series–“Journey to Babel” and “Amok Time”–are Spock-centric episodes. His ongoing struggle between his human side and his Vulcan side makes Spock, for me, a truly compelling character. And it’s played so beautiful in his contentious relationship with his father, from whom he gets his dry Vulcan snark QUITE honestly. Moreover, the way Spock’s face lights up when he realizes he didn’t kill Kirk after all at the end of “Amok Time” is beautiful.

Trek is a strong current in the filk music I came to love as well, particularly the songs by the aforementioned Julia Ecklar. Julia has a wrenching song in particular about the destruction of the Enterprise, one which makes me tear up every time I hear it. But she’s also got a delightful one from McCoy’s point of view: “He’s Dead Jim”. And yet another about the resurrection of Trek fandom when the movies came out. Trek meant a LOT to her in her music, and this shone through into my own development as a fan of Star Trek. I came to admire Spock as a character even more when I saw the hints of an early romance between him and Uhura in the initial episodes–and when I realized he was a musician as well.

So I may be a Kirk fangirl, but Spock is right behind him in my affections.

We lost DeForest Kelley in 1999, and now we’ve lost the second of the triad of the characters that were the heart of the original Star Trek.

But I think I speak for every Trek fan in the world when I say that all of us will be happy to stand in for Doctor McCoy, and provide a place for Spock’s katra to live forever.

Rest in peace, Mr. Nimoy. You lived long and prospered. We will miss you.

I leave you with this rousing chorus:

We’ve an admiral brave and daring, he’s the best the fleet has got!
We’ve a helmsman who’s named Sulu and an engineer named Scott
A Russian navigator and a slightly schizoid doc
But what ain’t we got? WE AIN’T GOT SPOCK!

There is nothing quite like Spock!
Nothing in the world
There is nothing you can grok
That is anything quite like Spock!

Editing to add:

And I also leave you with this.

Speaking of Julia Ecklar, here’s that song I mentioned above about the destruction of the Enterprise. This is “Fallen Angel”, from her album Divine Intervention. It brings me to tears every damn time I hear it, and I’m crying today as I transcribe the lyrics. And the solemn French horn that comes in at the line “there are stars before my eyes”, evocative of the Star Trek theme, particularly kills me.

My god, what have I done? Is this what I had to do?
I paid to save six lives–was it worth the price of you?
I would take your spirit in me, to make you live again
But your fire dies across the sky
My god, is this the end?

My steel-and-stardrive lady, my soul’s death is at your hands
As your own death was at mine, love
Though even I can’t understand
Why we gods can’t live forever–why should legends have to die?
As you wail to sleep in glory, my heart still seeks the sky

There are stars before my eyes
But they pale to your dying
You swore we’d outlive time
Oh my love, were you, too, lying?
What’s my life without your singing?
When I’m naught but flesh and bone?
Where have I damned my lover’s soul
To wander all alone?

But this death I can’t deny, as you fade to distant ember
My need to steal from death cost you, love, but I’ll remember
And I long to burn there with you, to never live again
Forever we would light the sky–my god, is this the end?

Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, by Diane Duane. Re-buy of a book previously owned in paperback. This is Ms. Duane’s take on urban fantasy, recently re-issued with new content. Picked this up because I’d been meaning to re-read it, and I’m curious to see how she changed it.

And, bought electronically from Kobo Books:

Star Trek – Die Anfänge: Alle Romane in einem Band!. This is a German translation of three Star Trek novels, grabbed because I noticed Kobo’s site has got a lot of SF/F in German now, and I was curious about the translations. The novels included are Vonda McIntyre’s Enterprise: The First Adventure, Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Strangers from the Sky, and Diane Carey’s Final Frontier.

Throughout most of my life, I haven’t been a huge comics reader. There have been notable exceptions to this–Elfquest of course being the biggest. I paid a bit of attention to The X-Men and Excalibur when I was in Kentucky. More recently, I’ve bought the Dark Horse Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 graphic novels, and their various Firefly and Serenity stories. And I’ve gotten at least the first of the graphic novel adaptations of jimbutcher‘s Storm Front.

But that’s been about it, really. There are a few reasons for this: one, I’ve got plenty of novels I want to read, and have very little mental bandwidth left over to seek out comics as well. Two, I’m finicky about my subject matter. Three, I’m finicky about the art; Wendy Pini set a REALLY high bar for me with Elfquest, and even now, that’s hard to beat. Four, I’ve got very little interest in physical copies of comics these days, for much the same reasons I’ve got less interest in print copies of books: i.e., I do most of my reading on my daily commute, and any paper copy of something I’m carrying around is likely to get beaten up by being carried in my backpack.

That said? I’m actually tempted by IDW’s new line of Star Trek stories that take plotlines from the original series and adapt them using the reboot versions of the characters. Yes, I know–the reboot Trek flick was very silly. But I really rather liked it all the same, despite its spectacularly goofy science. And I’m intrigued by the idea of what this line of comics might do with the plotlines; I was always a TOS girl, when it comes to Trek.

And since IDW does have various free versions of their apps, I could even buy this comic digitally if I so chose. I’ve seen that the Dark Horse comics I’ve picked up digitally are beautiful on the iPad, and that nicely solves the problems of space and abuse of physical copies.

I may have to get this. I’m still pondering; IDW’s app has a bit of a preview up for issue #1 of this line, and it does look tempting!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, solarbird and I are watching “Spock’s Brain”. With homemade kamikazes. The only way to handle this episode, we’re here to tell you.

We’ve got chocolate too. Just because!

And we were taking a drink on every occurrence of the word “brain”. We made it as far as “brain and brain, what is brain?!” before running out of boozahol! Time to break out the rest of the Mike’s for emergency backup booze!